Australia

When Japs Were Poised Against

300,000 Men and Thousands of Horses at Rabaul

A EOinr April, 1942 there were, in the Rabaul-Kokopo districts of the Gazelle Peninsula, New Guinea, between 300,000 and 400 000 Jananese troops. They were lavishly equipped, and with them thousands of horses. This huge force was intended for the invasion and occunation of the Victoria. Part ° f Australia—es P eciall y Queensland, New South. P Wales and

rAT is the most interesting and significant thing told by Mr. Peter Kyllert, a New Guinea planter, who has just arrived in Sydney, after being a prisoner of the Japs for nearly three years. How he escaped may not yet be

Toiq.

Mr. Kyllert had been in New Guinea nearly 20 years when the Japs invaded.

He has five plantations. The Japs made him a prisoner on his well-known Stock holm plantation, near Pondo, which he bought ten years ago from his Swedish fellow countryman, Captain Lindahl.

Although he was kept under close observation, Mr. Kyllert was able occas ionally to move about the district, and he kept his eyes and ears open and, through various channels, he learned much of what was going on. He has travelled widely and is accustomed to judging crowds, and he is certain of his estimate of the Jap army intended for Australia.

“I talked in Pidgin with some of the Japs, in 1942, and m German with some officers, and they w§re quite sure that they were going to take Australia,” he said. “They said they were not much interested in the cities, which would be quickly smashed up by their planes, but they were very eager to settle in the country. One man told me that he had a lovely little farm already selected for himself in the Northern Rivers.”

But the war began to swing against the enemy late in 1942, and the huge con centration of forces in Rabaul began to Australia d m the opposite direction to rE European civilians and soldiers weie kept in camps in and near Rabaul for some months, said Mr Kyllert ; and he learned something of w ent on - He said that no man showed a finer spirit than Mr. George Murray, Director of Agriculture. Mr. a . cr i ppled mad - a nd the Japs lost hw SS him kindly; but he never I? e^ se - of hui *iour, and he kept his fellows inspired and amused. Jit first the Japs recognised the rank of Mr’

Haroid Page, Government Secretary—but later they forced him to work on the wharves. All Europeans were forced to dition. Irrespective of their rank of con “ln June, 1942,” said Mr Kvllert “i Sotof teTck ‘toT 1 ® int „° Ral ™ ul a motor truck, to see a doctor. I saw the r Rabaul°^Tinfes d ’ Mr V H °°S erw erth, of Xf b s^d T To eS beTo S r^ g th ? he f f eZe i

sss? Mr L di r" are

European men confined on 1 wired-to verandah near the Post Office I think but I am not sure of that. I waftowW

certain Japs fairly recently that there was only one white man left in Rabaul— and from their description I think it was Bill Korn, from Pondo. If it was, they kept him there because of his uni que knowledge of the natives and their talk Evanson and Korn were left at Ponjdo by the Japs for some time, and I used to see them there occasionally. But about July, 1942, the Japs took them away from Pondo to Rabaul.” rLL the women not to worry too much about the prisoners,” added Mr. Kyllert. “One doesn’t get fat on native foods—but one doesn’t actually starve. Men in good health, organically, will come through, all right.”

The Japs left a small number of old Europeans on their plantations, as they did Mr. Kyllert, but they gave them no supplies, and they were often hard put to it to eat. The half-caste people in Mr Kyllert’s household provided bananas in all shapes and forms, and made a flour from tapioca.

The Japs were suspicious and in humanly cruel. The missionaries at Vunapope (a large proportion of them Germans) have been ruthlessly im prisoned, and their food has been taken and many of them have suffered greatly from privation and hunger- The Japs, for the first year or so, did e y e rZ^ ln £>. possible to get the goodwill of the natives, and set them against the Europeans, and in Mr. Kyllert’s opinion much harm has been done to future European-native relationships. But lately as the war turned against the Japs, they have been treating the natives very roughly—and now even the natives are “awake to them.”

WHILE, for a long time, the Japs f T “kidded” to the natives, they treated the Rabaul Chinese, from the outset, with the most horrible cruelty They robbed them, beat them, gaoled them and tortured them. Mr. Kyllert

f ai <L?. e that, when the Invasion 1S f ?u St ’^ lt u Wlll be found that two-thirds of _!£ e Rabaul Chinese are dead The Jap soldiery loot wherever and whenever they get a chance, and they show the same licence in their treatment at native women. General Sir Thomas Blarney said recently that the Japanese have thousands of acres under food gar dens around Rabaul. That was quite true said Mr. Kyllert, but it did not mean that the Japs were getting large supplies of food from them. The food plants were not allowed to grow to maturity— tne Jap soldiers were most expert in gardens half " grown stuff from their own T he \ n 1943 > were as certain that they would have to meet an American }S V fSo n «?\ baul » as they were certain m 1942 that they were going to Australia In each case, said Mr. Kyllert, the Americans upset their calculations. In 1942, they destroyed the Jap transport Y™ slated for Australian waters; in 1943, they by-passed Rabaul, and left the discomfited Japs to their own brutal devices.

“They are horrible people,” said Mr.

Kyllert. I did not meet one really human Jap in Rabaul district—except the men who came ashore from a warship at Pondo. They seemed kind of civi lised.

Another Planter Escapes

ANOTHER planter, Mr. Kenneth Spanner (he is 80 years old, and ™ therefore considerably the senior of Mr Kyllert) has also escaped to Aus tralia recently, after 21 years, in Jap hands. He is now with his daughter, Mrs. T. Fraser, of Lennox Street, Mary borough, Queensland.

He had a plantation on New Hanover, off the northern end of New Ireland; and when the Japs came, in January, 1942, he decided to stay, along with one or two other whites, in Kavieng. He told the Japanese officers that he was a Ger man, and he claimed the privileges of German nationality. The invaders were suspicious, and asked another man, a Nazi German, who was there, about Mr Spanner. The German played the game: hfe said that Mr. Spanner had lived a long time in a Germany colony, and possibly was of German nationality. So the old British soldier (he had seen active service in many places) was allowed to go back to his plantation on New Hanover, where he lived for over two years on coconuts and native foods.

Then he was sent for 10 months to a leper island, where there were 400 lepers.

When Mr. Spanner left, there were less than 150—the others had died, or dis appeared.